Every Last Morning
by erunyauve
Summary: In the days before the fall of Nargothrond, its lady considers each member of her family and those close to it. Characters include Arothir, Finduilas, Ereinion, Celebrimbor, Gwindor and Túrin. Mild canon het content.


**Disclaimer:** All characters and most of the plot belong to Tolkien.

**A.N.:** This is set in the canon of 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor', in which Orodreth is renamed Arothir and becomes the son of Angrod and father of Gil-galad. His wife is described as a '_Sindarin lady of the North_'. Her name, Meril, comes from an earlier text in which she is the mother of Gil-galad but the wife of Finrod. (1)

**Every Last Morning**

_I was there at breakfast. Yes. With the king ... and the queen. Just the three of us. Suddenly an equerry comes in. I mean this was _breakfast_, for heaven's sake! Not done, you know, ever. The king was furious, but the man went straight up to him with this note... ._ - Edward VIII (2)

She rose well before dawn on these autumn mornings. Before any but servants and guards were afoot, she would bathe and dress and coil her dark hair under a tressure of netted jewels. She would hear the housekeeper's report, speak with the cook about the day's fare and bake the bread to be served at the King's table. By then, high apertures cut into the cave wall would bring a thin light to the upper rooms. As Nargothrond stirred to life, she would sit down to breakfast.

Other meals might be taken in the dining hall; tea might be served in the drawing rooms and presence chamber; guests and the lesser lords of Nargothrond would share the King's table at dinner. Breakfast, however, was private.

**Arothir**

Meril gently guided his hand toward his chocolate, lest he dunk his bread in her tea, and gave him a bemused smile. He sat at table with a volume of Vanyarin poetry in one hand and bread with jam in the other, looking more student than king, but then, he was more a student than a king. While his kin had suffered scars of battle and heart-wrenching defeat, Arothir remained ever as soft-skinned and slender as a boy just come of age. (3)

His world was one of books and fantasy: he read epic lays of brave warriors who duelled with evil on the journey from Cuiviénen; he called his wife _lossenya_, his rose, and wrote effusive poetry to her in the _ann-thenath_ verse that he had devised (but for which others would gain fame). In truth, none but her husband would call her a great beauty, but in this, Meril was content to let his imagination rule. (4)

She had seen from the start the gentle soul of a dreamer, and wanted nothing more than to be the shelter beyond which the world could not pass. If she had her will, he would have passed all his days in his cosy library, high in the tower on Tol Sirion, disturbed neither by tedious daily chores nor by the chill of Angband. Yet duty comes, to the willing and unwilling alike, and his fate was very different from that she would have wished upon him.

**Finduilas**

Had she been permitted to lie abed until noon, one might have found her company more agreeable. That not being the present case, Finduilas was perhaps not quite awake and certainly not disposed to pleasant conversation.

In sullen silence, the elf-maid tore her bread into shreds, meticulously picking each crumb of crust from the tablecloth.

"Finduilas, eat your breakfast or at least stop torturing it."

"Yes, Naneth." She folded her hands in her lap and stared at her plate.

Her much-vaunted beauty had faded; she had grown wan and thin, and would no longer raise her lovely voice in song or laughter. On a chain by her breast, she still wore a silver betrothal ring, as if she could bear neither to return it nor to wear it. Her generous heart could hold great love, but in holding love for two, it had broken. (5)

No force could have separated Meril's heart from her husband, and so, she supposed, did her words of advice and pleading fail to turn her daughter's heart. Indeed, to vanquish hope would only bring despair - so easily is one seduced by glitter without substance, when substance is too grim to bear. For Finduilas believed still in fairytales, and their disappointment was her tragedy.

**Ereinion**

The absence of Meril's youngest child was ever-present, and were it not for her faith in Arothir's premonition, she would have recalled the boy from the Havens a dozen times. Ereinion had been hers as Finduilas was Arothir's child - sturdier of body and temperament than his sister, more solid and determined than his father. Yet, he had been too solemn a boy, disposed to worry over matters of great import, matters that should have been beyond his understanding or concern, at so tender an age.

Arothir believed that a heavy doom lay upon his son. "He sees too clearly - he has never been a child."

Yet, as a child, he was fixed in her mind, though he would be nearly come of age, now. Meril went to the nursery, sometimes, to wipe the dust from toys long left behind: wooden soldiers gathered in silence before a tall tower; a shield Celebrimbor had made for him; a stuffed dog named 'Huan', discarded at the last minute in favour of a tattered rabbit that had brought him comfort in the cradle. The dust always returned within days, and no airing-out would relieve the staleness in the air. The nursery seemed to resent its disturbance, as if it, too, mourned its loss.

**Celebrimbor**

He sat morose in his tea and clearly worse for the previous night's drink. He likely had not yet been to bed, for he was a strange, nocturnal creature, working at all hours in the forge, emerging not even for meals. On rare occasions, he would appear in the drawing room late at night, not long before the family retired, and would sit with them for a time in silence. Meril knew not whether he sought escape from solitude or simply the sound of life.

She had never known an elf so uneasy in his skin. He seemed displaced, as if his lineage was not only dispossessed but disaffiliated. Indeed, he had reacted with surprise when she had informed him that his presence at breakfast was not only welcome but expected.

She inquired, from time to time, as to his well-being, but he would say little. She had not the time to draw him out, alas - she had already too many broken wings to mend.

**Gwindor**

He had once had a place at this table. His betrothal to Finduilas, long awaited and finally celebrated in haste, had been as much intent to bond as promise to return.

Return he had, though so changed that he no longer felt worthy of Finduilas. It was said - by Gwindor, by Finduilas herself - that her heart had turned from him, but Meril believed her daughter's affections to be more complicated. In a fairytale, her kisses could restore him to his former beauty and heal his wounds, but in life, the toad would never again be a prince.

She had pressed him to come to breakfast more than once, but each time he only shook his head.

"I would not bring pain to your daughter, and I have not your husband's favour."

"Do not think he still holds your defiance against you. He remembers your loyalty, in the days when his cousins held sway, and if you are disregarded, it is because his ears hear only a Man's counsel."

"I thought it a kindness, to bring him here, but now I see that Beleg's fate is the fate of all who help and harbour him. I am sorry for it."

"I, too, am sorry for it, but for not your return, Gwindor Guilinion. In my heart, I believe Finduilas will turn to you again, if you will wait for her."

"I can only wait, for I will love no other, but I dare not hope."

**Túrin**

He had beguiled her, too, in the beginning. The people of Nargothrond had allowed the sons of Fëanor to strip them of their courage and loyalty, and they became a grim folk, shameful and suspicious. In these days, however, they went abroad fearlessly, riding into battle with their king ever at Túrin's side. Their grief lifted, the halls echoed with song and they moved with light feet and purpose in their hearts, as they had in the days of Finrod. Indeed, Meril thought Túrin had come in the hour of need, for she knew her husband was meant to be no king.

After a time, however, by his faithless dealings with her daughter, by his refusal of Ulmo, by his hasty temper and black vengeance, she came to see Túrin in a different light - as one who acted rashly and without care for others. Her disdain for him rankled - had a great king, and kin to her husband, not fostered him? When Meril heard this, she held her tongue, but she thought it strange that a man with such lofty beginnings could be so careless of a lady's honour, when she was betrothed to another.

With Arothir, she spoke her mind, as had ever been her habit, but her words fell unheeded; like his daughter, he confused courage with daring, boldness with bravado, _estel_ with _amdir_. He would listen to her no more than he would Gwindor or his cousins. (6)

"It was prophesised that the younger race would overtake us," he said softly. "Can you not see that he may be the saving of us? For he knows neither regret nor fear of death, and lies not under the Doom."

"Perhaps," she said, "but a curse lies upon him all the same." And she said nothing more, for hope, however foolishly founded, had come into Arothir's heart, and she could take it from him no more than she could take it from her daughter.

**--------------------**

Now, it swept down from the North: the winter of Beleriand. On a morning that whispered with a changed wind or tidings of something more fell, she woke well before her normal hour of rising. Arothir sat at his writing table, drawing embellishments around a poem half-finished, his golden hair glinting like fire in the lamplight.

He looked to her with want in his eyes, and said, "I rose with these words trembling to spill out, but my inspiration has left me."

"Perhaps I can help you find it again," she said, her breath close by the tip of his ear.

He took her hand in his. "My desire for you does not wane as it should. Do you mind, terribly?"

"Have I not borne two children these last hundred years? Have I ever turned you from my bed?"

He smiled briefly, but shadow returned to his brow. "Do you regret it? That we bonded in haste, and that in doing so, you brought upon yourself the Doom, though you did not know it?"

"I regret nothing, save that I have much to do before breakfast and yet I suffer - as you Noldor deem it - from desire for my husband." Indeed, the warmth in her loins was no less ardent than it had been the day they met, when - folly of follies - they had invoked the name of Eru and made love under the stars. "Would you make haste, lord, as you did on the night we were bonded?"

"As if this were the last morning of Arda," he promised, and he took her to bed.

**--------------------**

Arothir would never finish the poem, she knew, and she paused to read it, before it could be consigned to the fire.

_To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;  
For nothing this wide universe I call,  
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all._ (7)

She pulled her shawl close about her shoulders, to ward off the chill, and went to meet the morning.

**--------------------**

(1) (ref _The Peoples of Middle-earth_, 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor' pp 350-1 pub Houghton Mifflin; _The War of the Jewels_, 'The Later Quenta Silmarillion' p 242 pub Houghton Mifflin)

(2) (ref Gore Vidal, _Palimpsest_, p 208)

(3) In a note about the loremasters among the elves, Tolkien tells us that they included many of the princes of the Noldor and specifically names Arothir (at that time called 'Rodothir') among them. (ref _The Peoples of Middle-earth_, 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor' p 358, note 23 pub Houghton Mifflin)

(4) _lossenya_ (Q)  
'my rose' I've actually borrowed _lossë_, 'rose', from Tolkien's Qenya vocabulary, but it would probably fit into mature Quenya. (ref _Parma Eldalamberon_ No 12 p 56 pub 1998 & 2003) The _-nya_ suffix is the Quenya first person possessive suffix. _Meril_, incidentally, means 'rose' in Sindarin.  
_ann-thenath_ (S)  
This is a Sindarin verse form Tolkien named but never (as far as we know) used. We can only guess at the meaning, since the poem to which Aragorn refers has clearly been translated into Westron and lost any metre or emphasis the original Sindarin poem would have had. (ref _LOTR_ Bk 1, Ch XI p 189 pub Houghton Mifflin) However, it is guessed, from the Sindarin words _ann_, properly _and_, 'long' (_-nd_ regularly became _-nn_, except at the end of monosyllables) and _thennath_, the collective plural of _then_, 'short', that it means 'longs and shorts'. (ref Patrick Wynne and Carl Hostetter, _Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth_, 'Three Elvish Verse Modes' p 115) As for Arothir being its inventor, that is purely fabricated. I'm quite certain that Tolkien would have credited Finrod with it.

(5) 'a silver betrothal ring'  
In an earlier version of the story, Finduilas was said to be betrothed to Gwindor prior to his capture in the Nirnaeth. I see no reason it should have been left out of _The Silmarillion_, other than oversight. (ref _The War of the Jewels_, 'The Grey Annals' p 83 pub Houghton Mifflin)

(6) '_estel_ with _amdir_'  
_estel_ refers to hope in the sense of faith or trust; _amdir_ refers to 'hope with reason' (lit 'looking up'). (ref _Morgoth's Ring_, 'Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth' p 320 pub Houghton Mifflin)  
'his cousins'  
This refers to Gelmir and Arminas, who state that they are '_of Angrod's people_'. Though this is somewhat ambiguous, Túrin makes the situation more clear, calling Arminas, '_a runagate, though he claim the kinship of kings_'. I've used 'cousin' in the general sense of 'kin' - we have to presume that they were related to Edhellos, Arothir's mother, rather than to Angrod. (ref _Unfinished Tales_, 'Narn i Hîn Húrin - Appendix' pp 167-170 pub Ballantine/Del Rey)

(7) '_To leave for nothing..._'  
This is unapologetically ripped off from Shakespeare, Sonnet 109.


End file.
